Abstract
Though Professor Davies was essentially right in his description of a prosperous late 19th century in the wake of the Industrial Revolution which brought major industrial and scientific discoveries, the outbreak of the War in 1914 was not regarded as a surprise. The German state has often been held responsible for the Great War being a young and ambitious state having a rather aggressive foreign policy. In 1918 it was improperly regarded as the trouble-maker (as Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles states).
But a closer look shows that Europe had been preparing for war since the early years of the 20th century. Profound strengths had been at work decades before through the exaltation of nationalisms which drove the peoples apart. At first the idea of a nation was voiced by the elites at the beginning of the 19th century, it then became a matter of masses at the dawn of the First World War. In the European states which had already achieved the Nation-state, public education, the media and the army soon crafted the nationalistic feeling.
This nationalistic exaltation fuelled what Nietzsche called the "will to power" of the greater European states, namely imperialism as a policy reinforcing numerous tensions in the context of a more intense economic and colonial competition. Europe and the world soon became too confined for ambitious powers facing new challengers such as the United-States and Japan.
